The eukaryotic nucleosome, the basic unit of chromatin, is thermodynamically stable and plays critical roles in the cell, including the maintenance of DNA topology and regulation of gene expression. At its C2 axis of symmetry, the nucleosome exhibits a domain that can coordinate divalent metal ions. This article discusses the roles of the metal‐binding domain in the nucleosome structure, function, and evolution.

Metal ions may play an essential role in chromatin organization and, thus, be main actors in the gene expression drama. A model is proposed here for the interaction of DNA‐binding transcriptional regulatory proteins with histone H3 via coordinated metal ions and discussed in relation to the conversion of nucleosomal ‘closed’ to ‘open’ states.

Se trata de mostrar que la“hermenéutica del testimonio” deRicoeur, a pesar de darle la dimensiónde la contingencia histórica que le faltaal concepto de “mundo del texto” y deintroducir la mediación histórica de laconciencia, no rompe con loslineamientos kantianos desde loscuales Ricoeur ha concebido suhermenéutica filosófica, ya que eltestimonio es pensado desde la relaciónkantiana entre las ideas y supresentación sensible.This paper intends to show that in spiteof the fact that Ricoeur’s “Hermeneuticsof Testimony” provides the historic dimension that is missing in the (...) conceptof “world of text” and introduces thehistoric conditioning of consciousness, inno way interrupts connection with the Kantian influence within which Ricoeur conceives his philosophical hermeneutics,since the notion of Testimony has been thought from the point of view of the Kantian relation between ideas and their perceptible presentation. (shrink)

Transient changes in DNA torsional tension are generated by environmental stimuli and transcriptional activity. In eukaryotic cells, these changes can only be accommodated by a chromatin structure that is flexible. This property of chromatin may be essential to the regulation of eukaryotic gene activity.

En qué consiste la excelencia del hombre y cómo se la logra es el tema de los sofistas. En cuanto a lo primero, la excelencia se mide por el éxito en la actuación pública, en el ámbito de la Polis. En cuanto a lo segundo, en el conocimiento y hábil manejo de las técnicas del discurso. Excelente será pues el hombre que en las conversaciones privadas, en la actuación en el foro o en las asambleas sea capaz de persuadir, y (...) con ello, de hacerse valer. El peligro uso de las técnicas del discurso persuasivo a fin de lograr sus propósitos consiste en quererlo hacer a cualquier costo. La reacción de Sócrates será explicable en tanto se tenga en cuenta su preocupación para subordinar la técnica del discurso a la ética, es decir, a la finalidad última de la palabra sin lo cual la excelencia del hombre poseedor del logos es puramente aparente. (shrink)

The state of debates around the topic of `populism' has made clear the difficulties that exist to provide a coherent definition of the concept. There is much to be argued from historical, epistemological, comparative and sociological perspectives that may provide clarity to the uses of the term. As the world meets new scenarios of uncommon styles of doing politics and the themes of ideological polarization and social segregation take hold, the question about the value of `populism' as a theoretical tool (...) needs to be met with an affirmative stance that delineates its principal characteristics. The present text introduces the reader to four new perspectives that serve such a purpose and locates them among the relevant contemporary literature. (shrink)

Osteopotin is a secreted glycosylated phosphoprotein found in bone and other normal and malignant tissues. Osteopontin can be autophosphorylated on tyrosine residues and can also be phosphorylated on serine and threonine residues by several protein kinases. Autophosphorylation of osteopontin may generate sites for specific interactions with other proteins on the cell surface and/or within the extracelluar matrix. These interactions of osteopontin are thought to be essential for bone mineralization and function. The polyaspartic acid motif of osteopontin, in combination with neighboring (...) sequences that include serine residues phosphorylated by protein kinases, could fold and assemble into a molecular structure that participates in the mineralization of the bone matrix. (shrink)

This article offers a brief critical summary of our Populism(s) project to date, and introduces Thesis Eleven readers to the articles edited in this Special Issue. We comment on significant recent developments on populism scholarship, and reflect about the most recent developments currently taking place and their (potential) impact on current populism research.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the attitude of a group of cardiologists on the ethical conducts they would accept or adopt when encountered with different hypothetical situations of medical practice. Between August and September of 2011, 700 Argentine cardiologists were surveyed in situations which posed ethical dilemmas in the patient-physician relationship, among colleagues or involving financial agreements with employers or the pharmaceutical industry. Ethical conflicts were evidenced in a series of inappropriate conducts such as differential fees, trips (...) and meals sponsored by laboratories, splitting fees, overbilling, self-referral, charging for patient referral, financial compensation for ordering medical procedures, and various situations derived from the relationship with employers. In general, financial compensation from the pharmaceutical industry was more accepted than the conflictive situations which directly involved patients, colleagues or employers. The rejection of these conducts, the physicians' deontological education and the improvement of financial and organizational conditions in medical practice will help to encourage better medical professionalism and avoid unseemly behaviors. (shrink)

Purpose: To determine the relative value that patients place on consent for procedures in the emergency department (ED) and to define a set of procedures that fall in the realm of implied consent. Methods: A questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample 134 of 174 patients who were seen in the ED of a Midwestern teaching hospital. The questionnaire asked how much time they believed was necessary to give consent for various procedures. Procedures ranged from simple (venipuncture) to complex (procedural (...) sedation). Results: Participants valued a simple blood draw at a low mean of 1.02 minutes of extra time and a lumbar puncture at a high mean of 7.78 minutes. Of all participants 52% and 48% noted a time-value of ?0? time on blood draw and intravenous line starts, respectively, indicating that they desire no additional consent for these procedures. Conclusion: Defining a set of ED procedures covered under implied consent will be difficult because many patients value formal consent for even the simplest procedure. (shrink)

The transformation of the text from the pre-information technology and Gutenberg modes to the model marked by information or digital technology is such that it substantially changes not only the concept of the text but also the nature of philology itself. This paper presents and discusses the problems encountered in producing a digital edition of the Zibaldone Laurenziano, Giovanni Boccaccio’s handwritten manuscript conserved in the Laurenziana Library in Florence (Pluteo XXIX, 8). The Medieval text in general, and even more with (...) the case of a zibaldone-type text, has intrinsic characteristics that clash with the immobility and definitive nature typical of the print text. The digital edition has been defined by Lebrave as the “critical edition of the 21st century.” It can be based on hypertextuality and hypermediality, using the internet as a resource, and is perfectly able to render textual movement, restoring the text to its specific mobility. Il passaggio del testo dalla modalità pre-informatica e gutemberghiana, a quella segnata dall’informatica o digitale è tale da cambiare sostanzialmente non solo il concetto di testo ma anche la natura stessa della filologia. Il saggio presenta e discute i problemi incontrati nel lavoro volto a stabilire un’edizione critica informatizzata dello Zibaldone Laurenziano, manoscritto autografo di Giovanni Boccaccio, conservato alla Biblioteca Laurenziana di Firenze (Pluteo XXIX, 8). Il testo medievale (e ancor più un testo del tipo-zibaldone) presenta delle caratteristiche intrinseche che entrano in contraddizione con l’immobilità e la natura definitiva tipiche del testo a stampa. L’edizione informatizzata, quella che si può basare sull’ipertestualità, sull’ipermedialità e sul ricorso alla rete, quella che Jean-Louis Lebrave ha definito come “l’édition critique au XXI.e siècle” (Lebrave 127), è perfettamente in grado di rendere il movimento testuale, restituendo al testo la sua rigorosa mobilità. (shrink)

We study whether robots can satisfy the conditions of an agent fit to be held morally responsible, with a focus on autonomy and self-control. An analogy between robots and human groups enables us to modify arguments concerning collective responsibility for studying questions of robot responsibility. We employ Mele’s history-sensitive account of autonomy and responsibility to argue that even if robots were to have all the capacities required of moral agency, their history would deprive them from autonomy in a responsibility-undermining way. (...) We will also study whether humans and technological artifacts like robots can form hybrid collective agents that could be morally responsible for their actions and give an argument against such a possibility. (shrink)

A prova ontológica cartesiana tem duas partes: a primeira consiste em inferir da idéia clara e distinta da essência de Deus o conhecimento verdadeiro dessa essência, que é caracterizada como a de um ente sumamente perfeito. A segunda parte tem como premissa inicial o conhecimento da essência de Deus. A partir desse conhecimento é provada a sua existência. A principal objeção à primeira parte da prova se baseia na crítica de S. Tomás ao argumento de S. Anselmo. Ela consiste em (...) mostrar que da idéia (ou do conceito) de Deus é legítimo inferir a idéia da existência de Deus. Assim, se Deus é pensado, então é necessariamente pensado como existente. Mas do conceito de Deus não se pode inferir a sua existência, como pretendeu demonstrar o argumento de S. Anselmo. Os principais objetores da segunda parte da prova são Gassendi, Kant e alguns filósofos analíticos. Essas críticas se apóiam na tese de que existência não é um predicado real ou não é um predicado de primeira ordem e que, portanto, não pode ser uma propriedade de objetos, embora possa ser uma propriedade de conceitos (ou funções proposicionais). Se a prova cartesiana tem alguma plausibilidade, ela deve se esquivar dessas críticas. Nesse trabalho, pretendemos reconstruir essa prova tendo como fio condutor as objeções acima mencionadas. (shrink)

One of the key problems the field of Machine Consciousness is currently facing is the need to accurately assess the potential level of consciousness that an artificial agent might develop. This paper presents a novel artificial consciousness scale designed to provide a pragmatic and intuitive reference in the evaluation of MC implementations. The version of ConsScale described in this work provides a comprehensive evaluation mechanism which enables the estimation of the potential degree of consciousness of most of the existing artificial (...) implementations. This scale offers both well defined levels of artificial consciousness and a method to calculate an orientative numerical score . A set of architectural and cognitive criteria is considered for each level of the scale. This permits the definition of a cognitive framework in which MC implementations can be ranked according to their potential capability to reproduce functional synergies associated with consciousness. The probability of the implementations having any phenomenal states related to the assessed functional synergy is not specifically addressed in this paper; nevertheless, it could be thoughtfully discussed elsewhere. (shrink)

"Reinach's importance for the development of early phenomenology is particularly remarkable considering the brief life span of 34 years granted him for the development of his ideas and his influence. It was his death in action in 1917 rather than Husserl's going to Freiburg which cut short not only his own promise but that of the Gottingen phenomenological Circle. It is therefore not surprising that Reinach never found the time to formulate a comprehensive plan of a philosophy in which the (...) place of phenomenology was clearly defined." One can only extrapolate such a plan from his essays and fragments - for he never published a book. His conception would have.. (shrink)

I argue that from a very weak recombination principle and plausible assumptions about the nature of parthood and location it follows that it's possible that the mereological structure of the material world and that of spacetime fail to correspond to one another in very radical ways. I defend, moreover, that rejecting the possibility of such failures of correspondence leaves us with a choice of equally radical alternatives. I also discuss a few ways in which their possibility is relevant to various (...) debates in metaphysics. (shrink)

This article examines the challenges surrounding the application of multicultural, outcomes-based curricula for teaching media ethics and communication ethics classes within a small journalism program. The main question to be answered here is: From the perspective of students, does it make a difference to employ a teaching model that is embedded in multicultural values, and rewards personal transformation and "measurable results"? An additional question is: From the perspective of instructors, how can we best assess student learning and personal growth in (...) fields as "subjective" and intangible as communication ethics and media ethics? (shrink)

GIS has captured planning practice to an unprecedented degree, and this article on how it reconfigures and is configured by institutional context. The author inquires into GIS as a technology for incorporating knowledge into institutional use and includes five propositions: GIS's efficiencies in data processing allows it unprecedented facility and scope of analysis, its use increases alienation, its mimetic language furthers its role in planning, its logic appears rational—purposive, but it conceals an underlying normative logic, and its most profound effect (...) is on the mapper, and the alienating and normative character of GIS necessitate new modes of “social ground-truthing.” The author studies the southeast Los Angeles initiatives to demonstrate these propositions. This article compares two studies: one GIS-based, and the other based on participatory action research and discusses how GIS might be recontextualized into a technology for liberating democratizing processes. (shrink)

Endorsing the idea of group knowledge seems to entail the possibility of group belief as well, because it is usually held that knowledge entails belief. It is here studied whether it would be possible to grant that groups can have knowledge without being committed to the controversial view that groups can have beliefs. The answer is positive on the assumption that knowledge can be based on acceptance as well as belief. The distinction between belief and acceptance can be seen as (...) a refinement of the ordinary language concept of belief, and it may be useful in understanding the nature of epistemic justification and classifying various types of epistemic subjects. (shrink)

"Ingarden held that philosophy divides into ontology and metaphysics. Ontology is an autonomous discipline in which we discover and establish the necessary connections between pure ideal qualities by intuitive analysis of the contents of ideas. This is an indispensable preparation for metaphysics, which aims to elucidate the necessary truths of factual existence. Each section of philosophy - theory of knowledge, philosophy of man, philosophy of nature and so on - has ontological and metaphysical aspects. Ingarden argues that every being is (...) a triple unity of matter (contents), form (of the.. (shrink)

A proof-theoretical treatment of collectively accepted group beliefs is presented through a multi-agent sequent system for an axiomatization of the logic of acceptance. The system is based on a labelled sequent calculus for propositional multi-agent epistemic logic with labels that correspond to possible worlds and a notation for internalized accessibility relations between worlds. The system is contraction- and cut-free. Extensions of the basic system are considered, in particular with rules that allow the possibility of operative members or legislators. Completeness with (...) respect to the underlying Kripke semantics follows from a general direct and uniform argument for labelled sequent calculi extended with mathematical rules for frame properties. As an example of the use of the calculus we present an analysis of the discursive dilemma. (shrink)

This analysis comes from a philosophical glance at Aristophanic comedy, where the problem seems to move towards universality of poetry. The common manner to face this problem is getting close to the concepts of learning and inference, introduced in the field of a sort of action or a sort of character without consideration for the Aristotle’s horizon of the poetic research télos, érgon, oikeía hedone and katharsis, or the Greek theatrical-poetic representation as an autonomous form of universal mythos. The underestimation (...) of the comic genre has centered the research upon Aristophanes in the fields of politics, philology and history, but seldom philosophy. (shrink)

As a new type of epistemic logics, the logics of knowing how capture the high-level epistemic reasoning about the knowledge of various plans to achieve certain goals. Existing work on these logics focuses on axiomatizations; this paper makes the first study of their model theoretical properties. It does so by introducing suitable notions of bisimulation for a family of five knowing how logics based on different notions of plans. As an application, we study and compare the expressive power of these (...) logics. (shrink)

En este trabajo centrado en la Ética se resaltará la dimensión de alteridad de la esencia del ser humano y, por lo tanto, en el caso de Spinoza, de la noción de deseo. A partir de esta alteridad constitutiva, el modo dicotómico de pensar lo social y lo individual es reconsiderado mediante un deseo que, sin dejar de ser singular, es y persevera en relación con los demás. Con el fin de no reducir la noción de deseo a una de (...) sus expresiones, se distinguirá entre las diversas formas del deseo, en particular el anhelo, y el deseo-cupiditas. Asimismo se perfilará la noción de un deseo de razón en contraste con las figuras de la impotencia. Las vías abiertas conducen a la valoración de un pensador que nos legó una noción de deseo que implica simultáneamente afirmación y codependencia, insertándolo en debates éticos, políticos y psicológicos actuales. (shrink)

This study aims at showing how at the basis of Nikolai Berdyaev’s criticism of capitalism and Marxism lays the concept of Imago Dei. The Russian religious philosopher puts forward the Imago Dei as fundamental to the Christian understanding of human dignity. Berdyaev believes that in both capitalism and Marxism an objectification of the person takes place, and therefore a denial of basic human dignity. Berdyaev’s criticism of capitalism refers to its internal principles, partly building on Marx’s early criticism of capitalism. (...) Although he shared some of the same concerns with Marx and other Marxist theorists, ultimately his was a critique from a Christian perspective that was deeply humanistic, whereas Marxism in its Hegelian orientation had failed in achieving what Berdyaev understands as true humanism. Having confronted and engaged both systems of thought during his own life, Berdyaev’s insights are most interesting, and I argue in this paper that they are also relevant for our own reflections on these subjects today. (shrink)

A great variety of medical conditions are subject to the placebo effect. Although there is mounting evidence to suggest that the placebo effect is related to the expectation of clinical benefit, little is still known about the biochemical bases underlying placebo responses. Positron emission tomography studies have recently shown that the placebo effect in Parkinson’s disease, pain, and depression is related to the activation of the limbic circuitry. The observation that placebo administration induces the release of dopamine in the ventral (...) striatum of patients with Parkinson’s disease suggests a link between the placebo effect and reward mechanisms. In addition to Parkinson’s disease, the placebo-reward model may also apply to other disorders. However, the relative contribution of the different neurotransmitters and neuropeptides that are known to be involved in modulating the activity of the limbic system may be disease-specific. Thus, while the placebo-induced clinical benefit observed in Parkinson’s disease would mostly reflect the release of dopamine in the dorsal striatum, the activation of opioid and serotonin pathways could be particularly implicated in mediating placebo responses encountered in pain and depression, respectively. (shrink)

El artículo constituye una breve investigación histórica y teórica en torno a los principales nexos entre el pensamiento temprano de William James y el trabajo desplegado por Edmund Husserl en las Investigaciones lógicas. A través de un examen preliminar de las relaciones personales entre ambos autores, pasaremos a un estudio sobre el aparato conceptual desarrollado por James, sobre todo en Principios de psicología, con el objetivo de contrastarlo con el planteado por Husserl, mostrando cómo el primer autor esbozó, entre otros, (...) los conceptos fenomenológicos de intencionalidad y objetividad ideal. (shrink)

El ámbito decisional y la representación ciudadana encuentran nuevos desafíos en el contexto de la deflación de la subjetividad moderna y el desmoronamiento del fundamento político. Con la aparición del Big Data y el _machine learning_ aplicado al espacio de las decisiones políticas aparecen nuevas modalidades de la administración de la vida, las que, a su vez, generan nuevos registros de control sobre los cuerpos en una sociedad pos-disciplinaría que convive con la tecnología. Siguiendo a E. Sadin, J. Danaher y (...) K. O’Neil, se expondrán argumentos en contra de la ideológica creencia que confiaría en que la toma de decisiones algocráticas sería capaz de eliminar el prejuicio humano y el fallo en las decisiones políticas. De este modo, la Algocracia instancia una tensión a nivel político-normativo frente a diferentes teorías de la democracia, no reconociendo la opacidad de las fórmulas con las que se pretende tomar decisiones en el plano de lo social. _Palabras clave: _Decisiones políticas, representación ciudadana, gobernanza, algocracia, sociedad post-disciplinaria. (shrink)

Pese a que Gibbon sigue siendo ampliamente reconocido como un historiador excepcional, además de como un escritor magnífico, pocos historiadores de la Antigüedad tardía comparten hoy el paradigma interpretativo del _decline and fall _del Imperio romano. Autores como Peter Brown y Henri-Irenée Marrou combatieron con éxito el “prejuicio decadentista” a la hora de abordar el estudio de la Antigüedad tardía. Si tuviéramos que resumir en un solo término el paradigma interpretativo predominante en nuestros días en el estudio de este período, (...) este sería el de “continuidad”: continuidad (en los niveles administrativo, jurídico, cultural, etc.) entre los reinos post-imperiales del Occidente latino y el precedente imperial y continuidad también entre la cultura cristiana (cultura popular y cultura de los Padres de la Iglesia) y la cultura grecorromana. (shrink)

Diversas investigaciones han mostrado que la tematización de la autoconciencia no es un exclusiva de la filosofía moderna. Plotino es tal vez el primero en haber reflexionado sobre las cuestiones fundamentales de una teoría de la autoconciencia y, ello, en confrontación con el escepticismo de Sexto Empírico. La autoconciencia es propia de la hipóstasis del nous como unidad diferenciada de Inteligencia, Inteligible e Intelección que, sin embargo, se constituye a sí misma en su vano intento de aprehender la Unidad absolutamente (...) simple del Uno. El artículo examina una reciente objeción a Plotino según la cual él se limitaría a describir en qué medida se puede reconstruir la Inteligencia como anterior a la relación, pero no resuelve la paradoja sobre la posibilidad de que de una relación resulte una identidad. (shrink)

Las así llamadas Humanidades Públicas exploran hoy aquello que la educación cívica llamó educación liberal. El desarrollo tecnológico requiere de la imaginación y el juicio que las artes cultivan, pero a menudo olvida que la capacidad crítico-creativa es la fuerza que nos humaniza. La teoría de la imagen de Walter Benjamin señala una vía de pensar y escribir que estimula la simultaneidad y lo constelacional en detrimento de la continuidad, creando un lector distraído, alguien “distraído de la distracción por la (...) distracción” (Eliot). (shrink)

We show that if identical members first decide on the sharing technology (stage I) taking into account their subsequent effort supply (stage II) decisions, the resulting contractarian sharing technology (constitution) channels individual self-seeking towards team (Pareto) optimum. Voting with one's feet and open entry can ensure symmetry and majoritarian decision making in the real world teams. The model helps explain the differential performance of the Israeli Kibbutz and the Russian Kolkhoz.